INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
CEOs often rely on executive assistants to handle the less glamorous logistics of their day so they can focus on managing a company, but
hiring a full-time assistant isn&t always easy to justify, especially at a budding startup.
Double is aiming to cater to busy C-suite execs
who probably don&t need a full-time assistant but could still use some help managing their email, arranging travel, scheduling meetings and
balancing their endless work with a personal life
They&re pitching a service to startup CEOs and investors that matches them up with contracted remote assistants to help free up their
schedules.
&At the end of the day, these people are spending hours a day doing the things they aren&t best at,& CEO Alice Default told
TechCrunch in an interview.
Double contracted assistants are all based in the US and have years of previous experiences as EAs, Double
When an exec signs up for the service, they are guided through an onboarding call where they can share some of their needs before being
paired up with a dedicated assistant
Double says its assistants are generally working with about 4-5 clients at a time and in some cases are assisting multiple execs at the same
company.
The New York startup has been building their product under wraps and has raised some $6 million in funding from VCs including Index
Ventures and Paris-based Daphni
The team previously helped build the popular Sunrise calendar app, which Microsoft bought in 2015 only to later discontinue.
One of Double
big initiatives is honing the effectiveness of combining human efforts and software automation
The team hasn&t pushed too heavily on the latter, but Default says that they see plenty of room to augment how assistants handle tasks by
letting automation get the ball rolling.
&We are thinking about automation quite a bit, for us this relationship with [human labor] can be
much better,& Default says.
Double has spent the last couple years developing software to facilitate the connection between assistants and
The team now offers desktop and mobile apps as well as a Chrome extension that can allow execs to push updates to their assistants with ease
At this point, the service is iOS-only and requires a G Suite account so no dice at the moment for Outlook or Android users.
&What we
realized pretty early on is that one of the things that hard about delegating is giving the proper context,& Default says.
The service
charges hourly rates with a minimum rate of $250 per month for 5 hours of assistant work
Default says early CEOs that have been onboarded to the service in beta pay on average about $800 month for a bit less than an hour of
assistance per day.
Launching a premium service for executives in the midst of a pandemic crisis where a good deal of startups are thinking
about layoffs is far from perfect launch timing for Double, but Default believes the service can provide a lot of value to busy executives
scrambling to adapt their businesses
Default says the service has already seen some early users pause their subscriptions but notes that the month-to-month structure is flexible
by design and makes it easy for users to pick things back up when their firms (hopefully) emerge from crisis mode.
